>>Check out their GDP, their literacy rate, the amount of basic infrastructure like plumbing outside the big cities.
Trouble is that the "big cities" by themselves are as big as Europe or the USA. They're humming.
If you want to compare, check out Shanghai- specifically the new roads.
Seems to me the problems for China are downstream, when pollution and a downtrodden underclass exert the effects they always do.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
